BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Raina Perez, a North Carolina State guard, charged toward the basket and glanced behind her, searching for the kind of Saturday afternoon chaos she had just started.

N.C. State, the Bridgeport region’s top seed, was trailing with less than 18 seconds to go. Now, Perez, having just seized the ball from Notre Dame’s Dara Mabrey, was the Wolfpack’s best chance. Maybe, it seemed, its last reasonable one.

She turned her head back toward her target. Her layup fell in with about 15 seconds to play to give the Wolfpack their first lead since early in the second quarter. Perez soon followed up with a pair of free throws to give N.C. State its final tally, 66-63, and power the Wolfpack to its first round of 8 appearance in the N.C.A.A. women’s tournament since 1998.

The loss stunned Notre Dame, which led for nearly 32 minutes and built an advantage as large as 10 points.

Indeed, early in the fourth quarter, N.C. State Coach Wes Moore had stood on his sideline and let out a primal plea: “We need to score! We need to score!” His team had struggled to shoot all afternoon — it made 40 percent of its field goal tries, 10 percentage points lower than Notre Dame, and just more than a quarter of its 3-point attempts. Its defense had also been decidedly porous.

Moore’s hollering, it seemed, helped N.C. State to unlock the kind of prowess that had powered it to the Atlantic Coast Conference’s regular-season and tournament titles and made it the 12th-most prolific offense in Division I women’s basketball.

Perez had 7 points on Saturday, less than half of the 16-point haul that Elissa Cunane amassed across her 36 minutes.

Olivia Miles, a Notre Dame guard, led the Irish with 21 points.